Potentially relevant to that finding on pilot waves, among other things.
I get the impression from some people that analogies are only valid if they're direct subsitutions. "Alice walked across the room much like Bob did" would be fine, they'd say, but "Alice crept across the room like a cat that had spent six years training as a ninja" would not, because Alice isn't sufficiently similar to a cat.
Personally I think less exact analogies are more interesting and more illuminating. They encourage examination of what exactly it is about two systems that's similar and what's different, why those difference occur, and what other similarities the two systems may or may not share. More exact analogies are less interesting because they require less thinking. As far as laboratory astrophysics goes, analogies can suggest useful comparisons and lines of inquiry that might otherwise remain unexplored, but they can't replace the substituted system perfectly.
In a case that I wrote about in Quanta, a physicist in Israel created a fluid that traps sound much as a black hole traps light; he then detected an effect in this “sonic black hole” that is analogous to Hawking radiation, a hypothetical black hole phenomenon predicted by Stephen Hawking in 1974 with profound consequences for how the universe works. Does the tabletop experiment provide indirect evidence for Hawking’s prediction?
Hartmann argues that experimenting on sonic black holes may indeed shed light on real ones because there might be a “common cause” underlying their similar mathematics. In the same way, yellow fingers and heart disease are both caused by smoking, and detecting one can be evidence of the other. On the flip side, many black hole experts put no stock in the analogy and consider it potentially misleading, since it isn’t known whether Hawking’s math, upon which the analogy is based, actually does describe black holes.
Either way, the situation “raises wonderful philosophical questions,” Hartmann said, “because we learn about new types of evidence.” Increasingly, he said, physics theories like string theory and the multiverse describe realms of nature that are inaccessible to experimenters. Direct tests of such theories appear impossible. “So we have to think about alternative ways of testing theories. And whatever we think about these analogue experiments at the moment, I think these works go exactly in the right direction.”
http://nautil.us/blog/can-analogies-reveal-the-laws-of-physics
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
Recycling at the next level
Miniwiz sees waste as a valuable resource, not rubbish. Some 70 engineers and scientists in its Trash Lab - out of 80 staff in total - collect consumer and industrial garbage and process it for re-use. The 13-year-old Taipei-based firm has created 1,200 new materials, many of which are being used in fabric, construction, consumer products and - perhaps most ambitious of all - the wings on a two-seater aircraft that Mr Huang intends to fly (once he's finished his pilot training).
"We will fly with a trash wing," he says proudly. "We had to invent a new material. It's a carbon fibre-like material. It's taken two years' R&D (research and development), but we're almost there."
Miniwiz has created a miniature wind turbine and solar panel from electronic waste and paper that can charge smartphones. And in 2010 it built a nine-floor 130-metre building from bricks made out of 1.5 million plastic bottles for a Taipei garden festival - fully tested for structural strength.
Despite such inventions, a truly circular economy remains far off due to the costs of collecting and processing trash, says Mr Szaky. "The value of garbage is far below the cost of recycling it."
Governments could address this market imbalance through tougher legislation, but Mr Huang also wants countries to commit a percentage of their procurement budgets to recycled products. "It would open the floodgates for all sorts of technological innovation," he says. For Mr Szaky, it is consumers who have the real power. "When consumers make the right choices, producers and retailers will follow."
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45573141
"We will fly with a trash wing," he says proudly. "We had to invent a new material. It's a carbon fibre-like material. It's taken two years' R&D (research and development), but we're almost there."
Miniwiz has created a miniature wind turbine and solar panel from electronic waste and paper that can charge smartphones. And in 2010 it built a nine-floor 130-metre building from bricks made out of 1.5 million plastic bottles for a Taipei garden festival - fully tested for structural strength.
Despite such inventions, a truly circular economy remains far off due to the costs of collecting and processing trash, says Mr Szaky. "The value of garbage is far below the cost of recycling it."
Governments could address this market imbalance through tougher legislation, but Mr Huang also wants countries to commit a percentage of their procurement budgets to recycled products. "It would open the floodgates for all sorts of technological innovation," he says. For Mr Szaky, it is consumers who have the real power. "When consumers make the right choices, producers and retailers will follow."
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45573141
Well, bugger.
Well, bugger.
De Broglie insisted that everything at the quantum scale was perfectly normal and above-board. He devised a version of quantum theory that treated both the wave and the particle aspects of light, electrons and everything else as entirely tangible. His “pilot-wave” theory envisioned concrete particles, always with definite locations, that are guided through space by real pilot waves — much like the waves propelling Couder’s bouncing droplets.
Couder discovered by chance that tiny oil droplets bounced when plopped onto the surface of a vibrating oil bath. Moreover, as the droplets bounced, they started to bunny-hop around the liquid’s surface. Couder soon figured out that the droplets were “surfing on their own wave,” as he put it — kicking up the wave as they bounced and then getting propelled around by the slanted contours of the wave.
Straightaway, they saw the droplets exhibit surprisingly quantum-like behaviors — only traversing certain “quantized” orbits around the center of their liquid baths, for instance, and sometimes randomly jumping between orbits, as electrons do in atoms. There and in bouncing-droplet labs that soon sprang up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere, droplets were seen to tunnel through barriers and perform other acts previously thought to be uniquely quantum. In reproducing quantum phenomena without any of the mystery, the bouncing-droplet experiments rekindled in some physicists de Broglie’s old dream of a reality at the quantum scale that consists of pilot waves and particles instead of probability waves and conundrums.
The article contains links to the papers which have movies as supplementary material. I can't access the one about tunnelling, though there are numerous results if you Google "oil drop tunnelling". I'll have to check those out later.
After recording the trajectories of 75 bouncing droplets through a double-slit barrier, Couder and Fort thought they detected rough stripes in the droplets’ final locations — an interference-like pattern that seemed as if it could only come from the pilot wave. Double-slit interference, considered “impossible to explain in any classical way,” was happening without mystery before everyone’s eyes.
Drawn by the potential quantum implications, the fluid dynamicist John Bush started up a bouncing-droplet lab of his own at MIT and led others to the cause. Tomas Bohr heard Couder talk about his results in 2011 and later discussed the experiments at length with Bush. He teamed up with an experimentalist colleague, Anders Andersen, to study bouncing droplets further. “We really became fascinated with, in particular, the double-slit experiment,” Andersen said.
After perfecting their experimental setups, getting rid of air currents, and setting oil droplets bouncing on pilot waves toward two slits, none of the teams saw the interference-like pattern reported by Couder and Fort. Droplets went through the slits in almost straight lines, and no stripes appeared. The French pair’s earlier mistake is now attributed to noise, faulty methodology and insufficient statistics.
I'd like to hear from Couder and Fort. Most individual studies claiming that something has been proven or disproven turn out to be wrong. I don't mind quantum mechanics making the universe fuzzy and unknowable because it's like that anyway. No, what I want from quantum mechanics is :
- No need for an observer to collapse wavefunctions, because that is plainly silly.
- No need for multiple universes to kill a cat, because that's even sillier.
(I guess I could try and justify why I find these things silly, but I ain't gonna do that)
Originally shared by Eli Fennell
Pilot-Wave Alternative to Quantum Wave-Particle Duality a Bust
Ever since the dawn of Quantum Physics, there have been those who felt that somehow, eventually, it would be reconciled with a conventional Newtonian-Relativistic causal framework.
Einstein spent a large part of his later years trying to banish Quantum indeterminacy and entanglement (which he derisively called 'Spooky Action At a Distance'), only to fail miserably. Despite his insistence that God does not roll dice with the universe, the dice keep falling and no one can rationalize them.
A recent attempt to overcome this issue involved an analogy with the dual-slit experiment, wherein a photon can be shown in different conditions to behave as either a particle or a wave, but never both at once, depending upon how it is observed (or measured). As a particle is an object with a given mass at a given point in space moving in a particular direction with a particular velocity, and a wave is at best only some of those, this seems irreconcilable with our sense that reality must exist independent of observers.
More than a decade ago, some imaginative researchers suggested a theory based on observations of a stream of oil droplets surfing on their own wave, a pilot wave as it's called, which seemed to reproduce the effects observed in the dual slit experiment. This led to optimism that Quantum Physics could finally be brought back into the fold of conventional causation. Particles would be particles again, but sometimes behaving wave-like due to being acted upon by a physical pilot wave (think more-or-less a droplet of seawater being carried on an ocean wave, and you'll get the general idea).
Alas, research since 2015 has not only failed to support this, but has even debunked the original observation, showing that the droplets do not, in fact, behave like photons in the experiment they were meant to replicate.
Interestingly, one of those who helped put the final nails in the coffin of this approach was Thomas Bohr, grandson of Niels Bohr, the Father of Quantum Physics itself, and a Physicist like his grandfather.
Thus, yet another attempt to rationalize the Acausal, Uncertain, Observer-Dependent Reality described in Quantum Physics with the Causal, Determinate, Observer-Independent Reality pictured by conventional Physics and our general post-Enlightenment Era intuitions about reality has failed. While there are still efforts along these lines, they are vanishingly few, and increasingly arcane and difficult to disprove (thus lacking strong falsifiability).
As unsatisfying as it may be to some people, it appears Quantum Physics is correct in its core premise: though our macro reality may appear to be Causal, Uncertain, and Observer-Independent, its roots run into a more fundamental reality in which none of this is true, or is weakly true at best.
#BlindMeWithScience #QuantumPhysics #PilotWaveTheory
https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot-wave-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/
De Broglie insisted that everything at the quantum scale was perfectly normal and above-board. He devised a version of quantum theory that treated both the wave and the particle aspects of light, electrons and everything else as entirely tangible. His “pilot-wave” theory envisioned concrete particles, always with definite locations, that are guided through space by real pilot waves — much like the waves propelling Couder’s bouncing droplets.
Couder discovered by chance that tiny oil droplets bounced when plopped onto the surface of a vibrating oil bath. Moreover, as the droplets bounced, they started to bunny-hop around the liquid’s surface. Couder soon figured out that the droplets were “surfing on their own wave,” as he put it — kicking up the wave as they bounced and then getting propelled around by the slanted contours of the wave.
Straightaway, they saw the droplets exhibit surprisingly quantum-like behaviors — only traversing certain “quantized” orbits around the center of their liquid baths, for instance, and sometimes randomly jumping between orbits, as electrons do in atoms. There and in bouncing-droplet labs that soon sprang up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere, droplets were seen to tunnel through barriers and perform other acts previously thought to be uniquely quantum. In reproducing quantum phenomena without any of the mystery, the bouncing-droplet experiments rekindled in some physicists de Broglie’s old dream of a reality at the quantum scale that consists of pilot waves and particles instead of probability waves and conundrums.
The article contains links to the papers which have movies as supplementary material. I can't access the one about tunnelling, though there are numerous results if you Google "oil drop tunnelling". I'll have to check those out later.
After recording the trajectories of 75 bouncing droplets through a double-slit barrier, Couder and Fort thought they detected rough stripes in the droplets’ final locations — an interference-like pattern that seemed as if it could only come from the pilot wave. Double-slit interference, considered “impossible to explain in any classical way,” was happening without mystery before everyone’s eyes.
Drawn by the potential quantum implications, the fluid dynamicist John Bush started up a bouncing-droplet lab of his own at MIT and led others to the cause. Tomas Bohr heard Couder talk about his results in 2011 and later discussed the experiments at length with Bush. He teamed up with an experimentalist colleague, Anders Andersen, to study bouncing droplets further. “We really became fascinated with, in particular, the double-slit experiment,” Andersen said.
After perfecting their experimental setups, getting rid of air currents, and setting oil droplets bouncing on pilot waves toward two slits, none of the teams saw the interference-like pattern reported by Couder and Fort. Droplets went through the slits in almost straight lines, and no stripes appeared. The French pair’s earlier mistake is now attributed to noise, faulty methodology and insufficient statistics.
I'd like to hear from Couder and Fort. Most individual studies claiming that something has been proven or disproven turn out to be wrong. I don't mind quantum mechanics making the universe fuzzy and unknowable because it's like that anyway. No, what I want from quantum mechanics is :
- No need for an observer to collapse wavefunctions, because that is plainly silly.
- No need for multiple universes to kill a cat, because that's even sillier.
(I guess I could try and justify why I find these things silly, but I ain't gonna do that)
Originally shared by Eli Fennell
Pilot-Wave Alternative to Quantum Wave-Particle Duality a Bust
Ever since the dawn of Quantum Physics, there have been those who felt that somehow, eventually, it would be reconciled with a conventional Newtonian-Relativistic causal framework.
Einstein spent a large part of his later years trying to banish Quantum indeterminacy and entanglement (which he derisively called 'Spooky Action At a Distance'), only to fail miserably. Despite his insistence that God does not roll dice with the universe, the dice keep falling and no one can rationalize them.
A recent attempt to overcome this issue involved an analogy with the dual-slit experiment, wherein a photon can be shown in different conditions to behave as either a particle or a wave, but never both at once, depending upon how it is observed (or measured). As a particle is an object with a given mass at a given point in space moving in a particular direction with a particular velocity, and a wave is at best only some of those, this seems irreconcilable with our sense that reality must exist independent of observers.
More than a decade ago, some imaginative researchers suggested a theory based on observations of a stream of oil droplets surfing on their own wave, a pilot wave as it's called, which seemed to reproduce the effects observed in the dual slit experiment. This led to optimism that Quantum Physics could finally be brought back into the fold of conventional causation. Particles would be particles again, but sometimes behaving wave-like due to being acted upon by a physical pilot wave (think more-or-less a droplet of seawater being carried on an ocean wave, and you'll get the general idea).
Alas, research since 2015 has not only failed to support this, but has even debunked the original observation, showing that the droplets do not, in fact, behave like photons in the experiment they were meant to replicate.
Interestingly, one of those who helped put the final nails in the coffin of this approach was Thomas Bohr, grandson of Niels Bohr, the Father of Quantum Physics itself, and a Physicist like his grandfather.
Thus, yet another attempt to rationalize the Acausal, Uncertain, Observer-Dependent Reality described in Quantum Physics with the Causal, Determinate, Observer-Independent Reality pictured by conventional Physics and our general post-Enlightenment Era intuitions about reality has failed. While there are still efforts along these lines, they are vanishingly few, and increasingly arcane and difficult to disprove (thus lacking strong falsifiability).
As unsatisfying as it may be to some people, it appears Quantum Physics is correct in its core premise: though our macro reality may appear to be Causal, Uncertain, and Observer-Independent, its roots run into a more fundamental reality in which none of this is true, or is weakly true at best.
#BlindMeWithScience #QuantumPhysics #PilotWaveTheory
https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot-wave-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/
Tuesday, 16 October 2018
Jeff Bezos is a dick
Urrgh.
Amazon will work enthusiastically with the US military, its founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos has said. His unequivocal position comes as other firms, such as Google, pulled out of defence work after employee pressure. "If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the US Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble,” Mr Bezos said.
“We are going to continue to support the DoD, and I think we should,” he said. “One of the jobs of the senior leadership team is to make the right decision, even when it’s unpopular.” He later added: “This is a great country - it needs to be defended.”
... because the US's military dominance and foreign, ahem, interventions, aren't enough yet ?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45871248
Amazon will work enthusiastically with the US military, its founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos has said. His unequivocal position comes as other firms, such as Google, pulled out of defence work after employee pressure. "If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the US Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble,” Mr Bezos said.
“We are going to continue to support the DoD, and I think we should,” he said. “One of the jobs of the senior leadership team is to make the right decision, even when it’s unpopular.” He later added: “This is a great country - it needs to be defended.”
... because the US's military dominance and foreign, ahem, interventions, aren't enough yet ?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45871248
Paul Allen has died
Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft, has died aged 65 from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He had revealed the disease's return only two weeks ago, after previously being treated for it in 2009. He had said he and his doctors were "optimistic" about treatment. His Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said: "I am heartbroken by the passing of one of my oldest and dearest friends... Personal computing would not have existed without him."
He is estimated to have donated more than $2bn to philanthropy throughout his life including science, education and wildlife conservation causes, the Associated Press report. He was also an avid sports fan, owning both the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team and Seattle Seahawks NFL team, who won the US Superbowl in 2013. In 2010 he pledged to give the majority of his fortune to charitable causes after his death.
He also funded the ATA : https://www.seti.org/ata
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45871379
He is estimated to have donated more than $2bn to philanthropy throughout his life including science, education and wildlife conservation causes, the Associated Press report. He was also an avid sports fan, owning both the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team and Seattle Seahawks NFL team, who won the US Superbowl in 2013. In 2010 he pledged to give the majority of his fortune to charitable causes after his death.
He also funded the ATA : https://www.seti.org/ata
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45871379
Your phone is lonely and needs a friend, apparently
Big phones have little phones
Upon their backs to dial 'em
And little phones have smaller phones
And so on ad infinitum.
I get why a company would try and sell this, that's obvious. But I haven't got a soddin' clue why anyone would want one.
A tiny Android smartphone designed to be a "companion phone" to a full-sized device has been launched in the US - using the brand name Palm. The handset is the size of a credit card and has two cameras but no headphone jack or wireless charging. It aims to help people take a break from their main phone, the firm said, despite being a fully functioning smartphone in its own right. It has been greeted with bemusement by tech commentators and on social media.
Is it me or is this just a phone for people who really want two phones, because more must always be better ? Are people really that daft ? Oh, wait, don't answer that.
The device will cost $349 (£263) and will be available in the US, on the Verizon network only, from November. It is described in its marketing material as "a fully connected product that is in sync with your existing smartphone, so all of your connectivity can go where your smartphone can't".
"So here's a phone that saves you from your phone. But what saves you from your Palm? Presumably, another even smaller phone...." noted Andrew Orlowski in the Register.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45876934
Upon their backs to dial 'em
And little phones have smaller phones
And so on ad infinitum.
I get why a company would try and sell this, that's obvious. But I haven't got a soddin' clue why anyone would want one.
A tiny Android smartphone designed to be a "companion phone" to a full-sized device has been launched in the US - using the brand name Palm. The handset is the size of a credit card and has two cameras but no headphone jack or wireless charging. It aims to help people take a break from their main phone, the firm said, despite being a fully functioning smartphone in its own right. It has been greeted with bemusement by tech commentators and on social media.
Is it me or is this just a phone for people who really want two phones, because more must always be better ? Are people really that daft ? Oh, wait, don't answer that.
The device will cost $349 (£263) and will be available in the US, on the Verizon network only, from November. It is described in its marketing material as "a fully connected product that is in sync with your existing smartphone, so all of your connectivity can go where your smartphone can't".
"So here's a phone that saves you from your phone. But what saves you from your Palm? Presumably, another even smaller phone...." noted Andrew Orlowski in the Register.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45876934
The government is preparing laws against highly specific hate crimes
I think this is going a bit far. Shouldn't existing legislation just cover abuse as a crime irrespective of the person being abused ? Do we really need a special law to protect Goths ?
Last month, it was announced that a review by the Law Commission would look at whether offences driven by misogyny - dislike, contempt or ingrained prejudice against women - should be treated as hate crimes. And now it's emerged the same review will also consider the opposite - crimes motivated by misandry - hostility towards men. Ageism and hatred of certain alternative cultures, such as Goths or punks, could also be included in future.
However, the BBC's home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw says widening the definition could lead to a feeling that the impact of such offences is trivialised or minimised because there are so many different categories. It also runs the risk, he points out, of sentence inflation because many crimes currently treated as public order offences would be reclassified as more serious - and so would attract longer jail terms.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45870948
Last month, it was announced that a review by the Law Commission would look at whether offences driven by misogyny - dislike, contempt or ingrained prejudice against women - should be treated as hate crimes. And now it's emerged the same review will also consider the opposite - crimes motivated by misandry - hostility towards men. Ageism and hatred of certain alternative cultures, such as Goths or punks, could also be included in future.
However, the BBC's home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw says widening the definition could lead to a feeling that the impact of such offences is trivialised or minimised because there are so many different categories. It also runs the risk, he points out, of sentence inflation because many crimes currently treated as public order offences would be reclassified as more serious - and so would attract longer jail terms.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45870948
Astronauts can completely avoid bone loss through the correct diet
This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from experts working for an outside organisation. Dr Scott M Smith and Dr Sara R Zwart lead the Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
This part has nothing to do with the headline, but I found it more interesting :
Bone loss has long been one of the biggest concerns for space travellers. Astronauts tend to lose their bone mass at roughly 1% per month, the amount that osteoporosis sufferers lose in a year. The loss occurs because the body doesn't place gravity on the bones, and "decides" that you can get by with a smaller skeleton. On average it takes years for bone mass to recover after a mission.
After years of trial and error, several specific diet changes have been found to have a positive effect on bone health. Astronauts who had higher intake of fish like salmon and mackerel lost less bone while in orbit. We also found that diets with more fruits and vegetables were beneficial to bone strength. Conversely, large intakes of iron and sodium served to speed up bone loss.
Subsequent evidence showed that astronauts who ate well, had enough vitamin D, and exercised hard didn't suffer any bone loss during a six-month space mission. This was the first time in 50 years of human space flight that crew members had been able to maintain their bone density with nothing but diet and exercise. These findings also have direct implications for literally everyone on Earth, where the same diet changes could help keep our bones healthy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45735361
This part has nothing to do with the headline, but I found it more interesting :
Bone loss has long been one of the biggest concerns for space travellers. Astronauts tend to lose their bone mass at roughly 1% per month, the amount that osteoporosis sufferers lose in a year. The loss occurs because the body doesn't place gravity on the bones, and "decides" that you can get by with a smaller skeleton. On average it takes years for bone mass to recover after a mission.
After years of trial and error, several specific diet changes have been found to have a positive effect on bone health. Astronauts who had higher intake of fish like salmon and mackerel lost less bone while in orbit. We also found that diets with more fruits and vegetables were beneficial to bone strength. Conversely, large intakes of iron and sodium served to speed up bone loss.
Subsequent evidence showed that astronauts who ate well, had enough vitamin D, and exercised hard didn't suffer any bone loss during a six-month space mission. This was the first time in 50 years of human space flight that crew members had been able to maintain their bone density with nothing but diet and exercise. These findings also have direct implications for literally everyone on Earth, where the same diet changes could help keep our bones healthy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45735361
Chicken nuggets from a bioreactor
Hell yes I would. I rather like the branding of "slaughter free", too.
In 1931, Winston Churchill predicted that the human race would one day "escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium". Eighty-seven years later, that day has come as we discovered at Just, a food company in San Francisco where we tasted chicken nuggets grown from the cells of a chicken feather.
The chicken - which tasted like chicken - was still alive, reportedly roaming on a farm not far from the laboratory. This meat is not to be confused with the vegetarian plant-based burgers and other meat-substitute products which are gaining popularity in supermarkets. No, this is actual meat grown from animal cells and variously described as cultured, synthetic, in-vitro, lab-grown or even "clean" meat.
It takes about two days to produce a chicken nugget in a small bioreactor, using a protein to encourage the cells to multiply, some type of scaffold to give structure to the product and a culture, or growth, medium to feed the meat as it develops. The result is not yet commercially available anywhere on earth but Just's chief executive Josh Tetrick says it will be on the menu in a handful of restaurants by the end of this year.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45865403
In 1931, Winston Churchill predicted that the human race would one day "escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium". Eighty-seven years later, that day has come as we discovered at Just, a food company in San Francisco where we tasted chicken nuggets grown from the cells of a chicken feather.
The chicken - which tasted like chicken - was still alive, reportedly roaming on a farm not far from the laboratory. This meat is not to be confused with the vegetarian plant-based burgers and other meat-substitute products which are gaining popularity in supermarkets. No, this is actual meat grown from animal cells and variously described as cultured, synthetic, in-vitro, lab-grown or even "clean" meat.
It takes about two days to produce a chicken nugget in a small bioreactor, using a protein to encourage the cells to multiply, some type of scaffold to give structure to the product and a culture, or growth, medium to feed the meat as it develops. The result is not yet commercially available anywhere on earth but Just's chief executive Josh Tetrick says it will be on the menu in a handful of restaurants by the end of this year.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45865403
Ghost bats
Only one percent of the world’s bats are carnivorous, but they are fierce, effective hunters. They’re also highly secretive – so secretive that people only relatively recently realized they were hunters and not blood feeders.
Ghost bats belong to a group of bats known as false vampires. “False vampire bat” is a term applied to five genera of bats found in Asia, Africa, Australia and Central and South America. Due to their large size and sharp teeth, early observers assumed they made incisions and fed on blood, like the famous vampire bat.
Ghost bats and other false vampires do not feed on blood. They hunt and eat large invertebrates, lizards, birds, rodents and even other bats.
Ghost bats were once found over a large swath of Australia, but they have disappeared from the interior of the country. They are now restricted to the tropical north. At around five inches long, ghost bats are the largest bat in the suborder Microchiroptera, also known as the microbats. They are the only carnivorous bat in Australia.
Their coloration varies, but many have a beautiful pale coat. In flight, this makes them appear like – you guessed it – ghosts.
https://blog.nature.org/science/2018/10/15/ghost-bat-meet-australias-false-vampire/
Ghost bats belong to a group of bats known as false vampires. “False vampire bat” is a term applied to five genera of bats found in Asia, Africa, Australia and Central and South America. Due to their large size and sharp teeth, early observers assumed they made incisions and fed on blood, like the famous vampire bat.
Ghost bats and other false vampires do not feed on blood. They hunt and eat large invertebrates, lizards, birds, rodents and even other bats.
Ghost bats were once found over a large swath of Australia, but they have disappeared from the interior of the country. They are now restricted to the tropical north. At around five inches long, ghost bats are the largest bat in the suborder Microchiroptera, also known as the microbats. They are the only carnivorous bat in Australia.
Their coloration varies, but many have a beautiful pale coat. In flight, this makes them appear like – you guessed it – ghosts.
https://blog.nature.org/science/2018/10/15/ghost-bat-meet-australias-false-vampire/
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